Come Back To Me
by ALostHeart
Summary: Years have torn them apart, mistakes and regrets gnawed at their hearts, but maybe, just maybe, they can find a way to mend their wounds. One-shot.


**Hi everyone! So I was not so sure if I should publish this as an independant one-shot or in the drabble collection, but considerint that this is longer than what I normally publish in the drabble collection, I decided against it. **

**This is angst, but I hope you enjoy it anyway :)**

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He ended up on his knees, drenched to the core with the shower of fury that the heavens had unleashed. He ended up on his knees, exhausted and miserable, begging for forgiveness.

Except… except if he had only paid a little more attention before… If he had only learned to control his urges before, learned to understand her half a century ago, knew how to turn the table so many years before, they would not have gotten to this point, he would not have been begging right that moment. They would have missed all the heartache, the sleepless nights, the yearn for each other that would never soften her heart towards him.

And that was what tore at Caroline's mind the most… that was what hurt her the most and broke her heart… the fact that he was on his knees… the fact that he had allowed himself to get there, on his knees and begging for forgiveness.

What had happened? No one could tell. And did t truly matter? Did it actually make a difference, knowing what had happened and how they had ended up like that, on her doorstep with one drenched in the cold rain and the other drenched with tears? Will knowing what had happened erase the pain, and the sorrow, the stupidity and regret, the fights and the harsh words? No, it definitely, would not…

But maybe… Just maybe, going back to the past a little would help… would ease some of the ache, would open a chance for forgiveness… and that "maybe" was worth the shot, was it not? After all, they lived on his "Perhaps one day…" once upon a time, over three hundred years ago, and it brought them joy, even if the agony following it murdered most of the happy memories.

She could not help it still, and Caroline was thrown into a whirlwind of memories, flashing furiously and attacking her every sense with such intensity that it made her head pound, like a migraine inflected by a powerful witch, and she fell helplessly to her knees, crumbling before the man who owned her soul.

How long did it take for her to finally surrender to him? She could not quite remember any more. She went to college, got the full experience then followed him into a wrecked New Orleans. The war that had erupted was brutal, unforgiving, and what was lost made what was gained seem so little, so useless, so worthless. Blood coated the city, the hum of death hovering over it with the rainless clouds. Nothing poured to wash it away, and it scared Caroline to no end when into it she first arrived. Klaus and his family were seemingly untouched, but after a mere week an ugly secret went uncovered. Klaus was on the brink of parenthood right before he lost it. Hayley, who was pregnant with Klaus's child, died during childbirth… and the baby girl? She was collateral damage, ripped away from her father's arms just when he began to really want her. You wouldn't want to know what exactly happened to the girl, hell even Caroline did not know what happened; it was so brutal, so absolutely unbearable that everyone saved Caroline the gory details. All that needed to be said was that Klaus was never the same afterwards.

You could not quite put your finger on it. Hell for anyone it would not have showed at all, but Caroline knew. He became…harsher. I know what you're thinking, how is that even possible? Even Caroline did not think it was possible. Klaus, however, was a master at proving everyone wrong.

And no, it was not the kind of harshness that he volunteered towards his enemies. It was not the kind that made him enjoy torturing and killing more. It was the kind that made him cold and hard to the touch, mastering a wall so high, and so strong around himself… around his heart that no one managed to break through… Not even Caroline. And their first encounter was not at all how Caroline anticipated. He was cold, distant, cautious and guarded that it sent Caroline crying in her motel room, thinking that it was a lie… It was all just a lie and he already got over her.

What happened afterwards, you ask? What happened is that Caroline exchanged roles with Klaus. How exactly? Elijah explained what happened to her. She did not know what inspired such kindness from his part. Maybe it was the fact that she seemed so sad when she left the house, or the fact that her face and sunny smile fell at his brother's cold greeting. She did not know why nor cared. All that mattered was that Elijah had come to tell her exactly what Klaus had been up to in the past a few years and what had occurred. As it turned out, the war had been between him and a guy named Marcel who was already dead by the time that she had stepped into New Orleans. Elijah sadly admitted that even though they had the witches on their side still after Marcel's murder (at the hands of Klaus, specifically) Marcel's followers remained loyal to him. The fact that Klaus had killed their "king" did not help him the least bit in gaining their allegiance. Soon enough, a war erupted between Klaus, his family, and their "subjects" and between Marcel's faithful followers.

Of course, no one could quite harm the Original family, but from what Elijah perceived, Marcel's followers had witches on their side as well, and powerful ones at that, which almost made the grounds even. _Almost. _

It wasn't until Elijah reached the part of Klaus's deceased baby girl that the sadness started crashing down onto Caroline in waves. She could tell that talking about it was quite difficult for Elijah by the way his voice broke and his eyes watered despite his attempts to stay stoic before her. He saved her the gory details, as Klaus would call it, and dismissed any attempt from her part to find out how exactly the girl was killed. Something told her that she did not want to know either which made her attempts scarce to begin with.

So she ended up in his house again, to his very amazement, talking to him about her college years and everything that she had done. She knew that she should leave. Klaus had probably been broken beyond repair after that incident, but something about his cold blue eyes that stared back at hers with unfamiliar harshness yet with the tiniest bit of curiosity behind the walls of ocean blue orbs made her want to help him. Help him do what? It did not matter, he needed help, and she was offering.

Soon enough, his short replies became longer, his cold eyes warmed, his rigid posture relaxed, and his tough tone became softer. And he began to smirk again, then smile and she did not know how much she had missed the way his lips stretched and his dimples winked until it happened the first time. Then he touched her, brushed his arm against hers while trying to sidestep her, put his hand over hers hastily as they talked, sat closer to her and let their knees and shoulders brush against each other. And those small gestures made her happy, so very happy that it added a skip to her step and a grin on her lips every time she raced towards her bedroom that was now in his safe mansion. He had merely told her to take the room, and really it sounded more like a demand than anything else, but she gratefully took it, not wanting to wander around in a place where vampires were eagerly killing each other.

But it was not until the war was over, and they had, expectedly, won that he first laughed. The last of Marcel's followers had given up to the now king of New Orleans Niklaus Mikealson, choosing that over death. And when he did laugh, his genuine laughter with dimples and that deep sound coming from within his throat, Caroline had thrown her arms around him and kissed him. It was so easy, so simple and felt so good.

It continued to feel good for decades afterwards… no, actually, it continued to feel good for two hundred years. Then what? Then he got bored… or so did Caroline think. He started pursuing his hybrid-making quest again.

"You have the whole vampire population in New Orleans wrapped around your finger, what do you need hybrids for?" Caroline had argued.

But there was no talking him out of it. To him, it was old insecurities reemerging, afraid that everyone would turn their backs on him even though no one really was going to. To her, it was a sign that she was not good enough to fill up his loneliness or the void in his heart.

They grew distant. His stalking for Katherine's bloodline (who knew that Katherine would actually marry a human and have five kids?) was taking up most of his time, and she started to cry herself to sleep. She talked to him less and less, and sometimes looking at him became unbearable especially with his mind drifting elsewhere as he sat right next to her.

The last straw was when a blast from the past came into the picture. She was someone who had once meant something to Klaus, a confident bombshell by all accounts. And she signed the death certificate of their relationship with her catlike smile. The funny thing was that that woman was so insignificant to the point that even though they allowed her to wreck their relationship, Caroline did not remember her name.

Caroline let her get to her, she later realized, she let the taunting words and the not-so-innocent gestures get to her. And they both paid for it. Because Caroline lost her mind, as Klaus would put it, but he preferred that woman over her she would argue. She felt less and less important to him, jealousy eating her inside out, scratching at her mind and breaking her heart. She fought with him at any given chance, growing frustrated with his coldness and indifference towards her. But what she did not know was that Klaus acted accordingly only because he thought that she was making up excuses leading to her leaving him. And if she wanted to hurt him then he would hurt her, too.

And that was why she found him with that woman in their bed one dreadful evening.

It would have been the tiniest bit less painful had Klaus acted like he actually cared. Except that when her tears-streaked face met his cold glare, he merely shrugged nonchalantly, even though what he truly wanted to do was to claw his skin out, remove the mark of where that woman's lips and hands had fallen on his skin.

When Caroline left the house that night, she never came back. She did not even collect her things, something that Klaus had depended on to see her again, even if the sight of her sent a shooting pain of remorse through his being. She, however, wanted nothing from her life with him, nothing that he touched, nothing that he gave her, nothing that smelled of his intoxicating scent, while he made no move whatsoever to find her, which only added to Caroline anguish.

He lasted for a year; a year of not hearing her voice, not touching her skin, not caressing her hair, not kissing her lips. Until it became impossible to stay away. Well, he did stay away, she could not see him, but he did. He watched her movements, knew what she was doing and how she was doing. She seemed broken which inevitably broke him, the knowledge that it was his doing that sent the beautiful ray of sunshine crashing down, almost broke his heart. No, not almost it _did _break his heart… his none-existing heart.

Contrary to what Klaus thought, Caroline was very much aware of his presence, and it pained her more than he would have imagined. It was not the mere fact that she could not look at him, it was the fact that she missed him so very much, to the point that it was hard to breathe sometimes, that ached so greatly. She craved and hated the idea of him, and his presence, the feeling that he was hovering wherever she went, was like rubbing salt in her wide-opened wounds.

Fifty years passed and they continued like that. He did not talk to her, just acted like an unwanted guardian angel… or a devil circling his next prey.

It was not until the past week that he began to make himself visible, when a particular man began to show interest in her. Caroline ignored Klaus, and the man for the matter, but he was quite incessant. The problem was that she loved Klaus so very much still, and was not willing to have another man in her life no matter how deeply Klaus had hurt her.

That night, though, Caroline had laughed on this guy's joke. It was the tinkling laughter that Klaus had missed so much, and that he hadn't heard in over fifty years. And even the Original hybrid had his breaking point. He finally realized that she could live happily without him. It was him who could not live without her.

This is how he ended up at her doorstep, drenched in rain and remorse. This is how he fell to his knees, begging her. And as Caroline fell right before him, she saw his tears that were mixed with the raindrops. She saw the first tears he had shed in over three hundred years, she saw the pain in the blue orbs, the cold and hard exterior he had built crumbling down right in front of her, all the pain and pent-up anguish unleashed through the blue eyes.

Her hands resting on his shoulders, his head bent and his voice breaking, he finally uttered the three words for the first time

"I love you" he said.

She waited for the relief to come, for her heart to speed up and the smile to stretch her lips, but only pain and hurt erupted from her chest. Pain for him, pain for her, pain for all that could be fixed and all that could never be fixed. She did not know into which category their relationship had fallen, and did not particularly care in that moment.

She cupped his cheeks, forcing his eyes to stare back at hers.

"I love you, too" she said, pain dripping from her choked words and heart breaking with the simple statement.

He touched her then, for the first time in what seemed like centuries, he touched her, resting his hands on her arms and slowly caressing her upwards, looking not just relief, but also fascinated that he could touch her again after it seemed impossible.

"I cannot live without you" it was a mere whisper –a whisper that was Caroline's breaking point.

She threw her arms around him, holding him, soothing him, sending warmth that melted the ice around his heart as he clung to her, desperately keeping her close to him, hugging her tighter and letting sigh after sigh of relief escape his lips as he caressed the soft, warm body in his arms and her nails dug into the muscles of his back just as desperately.

Caroline did not know what would happen, did not know how they would fix their broken relationship, did not know what would fix their broken hearts, did not know what would happen once they inevitably broke apart.

But she knew that she would hold him for hours, that she would hold him for days or even weeks until he understood, until he knew without a shadow of a doubt that she, too, could not live without him.


End file.
